Paul Stanley Recalls Popularizing the Rock Anthem

Paul Stanley recalled how he helped popularize the concept of the rock anthem after the unexpected success of the classic Kiss song “Rock and Roll All Nite.”

He began writing the song for the band's 1975 album Dressed to Killafter being encouraged to create something iconic by his record label.

“When I started writing ‘Rock and Roll All Nite,’ there was no such thing as a rock anthem,” Stanley told Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show. “Afterward, it became really the norm for bands to have a song that kind of epitomized their point of view and the fans’. But it was fairly uncommon. … Neil Bogart, who was president of Casablanca Records at the time, said, ‘You guys need an anthem.’ And it was like, ‘Huh? What do you mean, an anthem?’ The example that he used was a Sly and the Family Stone song, ‘I Want to Take You Higher’ … and I went, ‘Ah! Okay, I got it.’”

After the conversation, Stanley returned to his room in the Hyatt House hotel on Sunset Boulevard, a place known as the “Riot House” and from which he said Kiss were later “gloriously” banned. “I remember going into my room with my guitar, and sitting for a little while – and just like it was meant to be, just going, ‘I wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day,’" he said. "I went and knocked on Gene [Simmons]’s door and said, ‘What do you think of this?’ He said, ‘That’s really cool. I have a song called “Drive Me Wild.”’ That had the verses … and we put them together.”

The pair didn’t know what they’d done until several months after the single had been released. “So help me, it wasn’t until Kiss Alivecame out that I saw, ‘Jeez, this is truly becoming the rock 'n' roll national anthem,’” he recalled.

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